F-100 Western Nationals - Who’s Driving This Thing Anyways?!

With summer in full swing, I’m sure some of you out there have already completed or are knee deep in your truck-related summer road trip vacations. You do plan your vacations via places to drive your truck, don’t you?! I know I do, sort of. It’s what I like to call “recreational occupationalism.” And yes, I’m pretty sure I just made that up. But it goes something like this.

This weekend, there’s a mighty good F-100 truck show here locally in Anaheim, the F-100 Western Nationals. That’ll take up my Saturday morning. A few weeks later, Brothers Trucks is putting on a huge all-Chevy truck show, incidentally at the same venue. So that’ll be another day spent in recreational occupationalism. Both events will find me shooting event coverage, either for the print mag or for our website, as well as shooting feature trucks for these here pages. I’ll be cruising the C10 out for both trips as well, so I get to mix a little bit of work with a little bit of fun, that’s recreational occupationalism.

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It’s kind of like when your job sends you to Cabo for a “sales convention.” Sure they could’ve had the same convention in Harrisburg, but doesn’t Cabo sound like fun? Why not mix a little bit of excitement into the doldrums of the coal mine? I know I try to do that as much as possible and summer is when I can really take advantage of that situation.

There are so many shows throughout the country that if I wanted to hop in my truck and travel for three weeks, I could probably hit a legit car show every weekend and come home with enough material to justify the adventure. But as much as I’d love to do that, I still have to put a magazine together every four weeks, so that kind of absence is hard to maintain.

I can, however, sneak away for a week or so, which I plan to do come August. Following a five-day stint at the NSRA Street Rod Nats in Louisville, Kentucky, I’ll have a few days to pack up the truck before heading out to Utah for the famous Bonneville Salt Flats where I’ll be supporting Kev Elliott and the Rod & Custom roadster pickup, providing he gets it all wrapped up by then (go Kev!).

The relationship between our two magazines goes back to the beginning of CCT when both titles flew under the Peterson Publishing banner, so it only makes sense to keep that fire burning, and it should make for an interesting trip being some 700 miles through the desert in the middle of August in a 45-year-old truck. But that’s all part of the job working for the best truck magazine in the world! A little action. A little adventure. Hell, maybe even a little work. But definitely a whole lotta fun.

Just remember if you run into me this summer at a car show, try not to bug me too much, I am working, you know!